


Tears

by athena_crikey



Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6472639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight she has nothing left in the world but him, and he is not here. Bush is drawn into a family tragedy. (Post Hornblower and the Atropos)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posting here from LJ.

She cannot stand the silence of the house any longer.

The is a draught from the apothecary on the table for her, and the cheaper bottle of gin in the kitchen – if her mother has left any – but Maria can drink nothing with her husband missing. It is strange that she should fear for him while he is here in Southsea more than she does while he treads the deck of his ship far out in the violent ocean, but she does. Horatio is the safest of captains, the most knowledgeable of sailors and wisest of navigators. There is no danger he cannot outmanoeuvre on the ocean, no battle he cannot win: there, he is in his element. That is what she must believe to keep her peace of mind, and so she does. But on land there are all manner of other dangers he is not used to – the pick-pockets, the violent drunks, the men whose brains have been addled by decades of bloody warfare – all of whom roam the streets in the night. Usually, she would not be so concerned. Usually, she would trust her heroic husband to take care of himself.

Tonight she cannot. Tonight she has nothing left in the world but him. She has known what it was to have a full home, to have a breast full of tender love and warmth and happiness. Now she knows what it is to lose that – it is a knife of ice to the gut, a cutting wire to the throat. It is a silent cradle and a cold bed, it is white sheets covering forms which were never still before this night. Tonight Maria knows a grief she had only ever imagined, and finds that imagination has the tender paws of a kitten compared to reality’s iron-hard claws. And not only does she not have her husband to comfort her, she now fears for his life. It is simply too much. Her heart cannot bleed anymore. So she takes her cloak from its peg in the hall, and steps out into the dark night.

The moon is young tonight, a white sliver against the black sky. The streets are barely lit – this is no rich neighbourhood to be able to afford streetlamps every few yards – and Maria moves more by memory than sight. She has never been out in Southsea at this time of night, knows the hour only from waking in bed to the sound of the press passing below the window. She hurries over the crooked paving stones and feels no fear for herself. She hardly has any even for Horatio now. All she knows is a sort of cold, hard need. She needs her husband. Not an emotional, keening need but rather the simple need of a body for food or water. She needs to know he is safe to keep her splintering heart from shattering.

Maria turns a corner and comes into a narrower street where the windows are smaller and pressed more closely together in the cracking brick buildings. There isn’t enough light to read the numbers on the doors, so she takes the number from the one on the corner by the lamppost and counts. She isn’t clever, but she has a good head for figures all the same – years as a schoolmistress have sharpened that skill, at least. She thanks the heavens for it now, even as she comes to the door which by her count must be the right one – 97. 

There is no knocker, but she wasn’t expecting otherwise. She pounds on the ancient wood with her fist, hammering fit to wake the dead and shouting pathetic entreaties to the deaf door. The longer she pounds the closer her voice comes to breaking, sobs pushing the pleading words apart. Her skin is beginning to numb when a window above is finally cast open and a capped head looks out.

“We’re locked up for the night; push off,” shrieks a woman in a harsh tone not unlike Maria’s mother’s. A voice well used to admonishing reticent renters. Maria stops pounding and steps back, rubbing her sore hand with the other and trying to force understandable words past the tight choking band of her throat.

“Please, I need to speak to Mr. Bush. It’s very urgent. My husband was his captain – please!” She has no reason to think Bush will be here, other than that she knows from his visits to her husband that he is in town looking for a ship and has stayed here before. But fate surely cannot be so cruel to spite her in this, as well.

The woman, in the act of closing the window, edges it open again suspiciously. “His captain, eh?”

Relief blooms bright and brief as a drop of blood in water, but there is no time to savour it. “Yes, he’s needed urgently! There’s a ship – please!” Maria, sensing the woman’s wavering, says the first thing that comes to mind. Hammers wedges into the landlady’s indecision, to crack it wide open. “With Captain Hornblower, Horatio Hornblower. He was in the Gazette last month.”

“Aye, I seem to recollect it. Very well, I’ll fetch Mr. Bush down. But he won’t be getting back here afore sunrise. I won’t be knocked up twice in one night.”

“No, no, of course not. He’s needed at the dockyard – he won’t be back tonight. Thank you. Thank you.” 

The window closes, and Maria staggers against the wall, relief dousing the fires of her panic and bringing home to her the shakiness of her legs and the biting cold of the clear night. She sits down on the edge of the stair, wrapping her cloak more tightly about her and chaffing her trembling hands.

She hears Lieutenant Bush coming before the door opens, hears him pounding down the stairs as though the house were on fire. He stops at the door to unbolt it, giving her time to stand, and then he bursts out into the night with his greatcoat hung over his shoulders like a cape and his hat askew on his head. The door slams shut behind him, bolts shoved to. Maria feels a tinge of guilt, but it’s quickly quashed by anguish. She hasn’t told a soul yet, hasn’t had to speak the words, and now that she can sense them looming ahead of her she isn’t sure she has the heart left to cut herself so deeply again.

Lieutenant Bush pulls his coat on properly, turning to address her as he does so. “Ma’am? Where’s the captain?”

Maria wraps her arms around herself, fingers fisted so tight the nails dig into her palms like spades into fresh dirt. “I’m sorry.” She rocks on the cobbles, head lowered. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bush.”

“Ma’am?” 

“Ho-Horatio – the captain,” she manages, throat beginning to burn and eyes blurring. “I don’t know where he is, Mr. Bush. I didn’t know who else to go to,” she whispers, voice rough as new brick.

“What’s wrong, ma’am? You said something about a ship? Has the captain been given a command? Are w – is he sailing?” Bush stumbles over the question he must be eager to have answered, but Maria hardly notices.

“No, no, no.” The words slip out from between her lips like stitches falling from a needle. “Please, Mr. Bush. Please, find him and bring him home.”

“But what’s the _matter_ , ma’am?” Lieutenant Bush sounds confused and frustrated, a tall figure in the gloom. She has only met him a handful of times, knows him only as the quiet man who lives behind her husband’s right shoulder, watching everything with the sharp eyes of a man whose duty it is to keep order. He has always been distantly polite to her, and only ever talkative in his cups. But he has known Horatio longer than she, knows the man he is at sea as well as she knows the man he is on land. 

“The children,” she says, raising her hands to cover her running nose and trembling mouth even though he can’t possibly see her in this darkness. “The children – the pox – they, they, they…” she can’t force the word out, can only stammer out the same ones, like the tuneless notes cranked from an organ grinder’s instrument. She claps her hand tight over her mouth to stifle the sob, and then takes in a deep breath. “Horatio left after – after. He hasn’t come back, and I am frightened. He’s not himself, Mr. Bush. He is so – he held little Horatio while he, while he, while he died.” She breaks down at last, can no longer stop her cries. They slice out of her so deep and painful that she can barely keep from falling.

“Please, ma’am, don’t cry,” begs the lieutenant, horrified, catching her elbow awkwardly to support her. “Come with me and I’ll take you home and then find the captain. Come with me, ma’am, please.” He tugs her around, puts her arm through his and leads her through the streets at a slow pace. 

His arm is strong and warm against hers, his pace quick and his stride long. He moves like Horatio, with a slightly rolling step to give him better balance, and like Horatio he smells of salt – of the sea. Maria sobs against his shoulder, and wishes it were her husband’s.

Lieutenant Bush escorts her through the dark town, ignoring the dogs that bark after them and responding once to a drunk’s cry with rebuke so sharp the man flinches away. He sees her to the doorstep of her boarding house, where he unfolds her arm from his and hands her up onto the stairs as he would hand a woman up out of a boat. “I will find Captain Hornblower and bring him home,” he tells her. “See yourself to bed, and don’t be concerned for him. The captain is a respected man here, no harm will come to him.”

Maria balls her handkerchief in her hands with distracted fingers. “Thank you, thank you. I do not know how –”

“Please ma’am,” he says again in that shocked voice, and she falters into silence. Once she would have spoken just so to Horatio, had he given her something undeserved or unlooked for. Maria nods, and tries to take herself in hand. Speaks not as Horatio’s wife but as a former landlady’s daughter and schoolmistress, a woman used to small practicalities.

“When you come back, you must stay the night. I will make up a bed for you in the sitting room. Don’t protest,” she adds, when he begins to. “Your landlady will not let you back in tonight, I’m afraid. I really am –”

Bush shifts uncomfortably, and cuts her off. “Alright, ma’am. I’ll find the captain.”

She doesn’t have time to answer before he’s stomped off into the darkness, footsteps echoing on the cobbles. Maria opens the door, slips inside, and stands in the hallway staring up the stairs. She has been up and down them hundreds of times. But she never before has had to drive herself up them with cold dread in her heart. 

Maria mounts the stairs into the silence beyond, and her fingernails dig tiny howes in her forearms.

\----------------------------------------------------

Bush hurries down the narrow streets of Southsea towards the Portsmouth docks and the sailors’ pubs there, fleeing to escape the awkwardness of Mrs. Hornblower sobbing on his shoulder and struggling to thank him for his agreeing to do something he shouldn’t. The captain won’t thank him for seeking him out at such a painful time as this, for having seen his family falling apart, his wife wandering the streets grief-stricken while he was absent. 

It’s late, even for the dock establishments, and most of the men still present are unconscious or so close as to make no difference. Bush stalks through the reeking bodies, kicking over those who get in his way with a remorseless boot. There are very few officers still here, of course. Some petty officers, and a few debauched mids who will doubtless have cause to regret their actions tomorrow. 

Bush kicks and pushes his way through two pubs and a brothel before finding a man who claims to have seen the captain.

“Aye, I’ve seen him. But he ain’t here no more, Lieutenant. Had a couple of drinks and wandered out. Strange the whole time, absent-like, as though he didn’t care ‘bout none of it. Like a man who’d lost his ship, he were.”

“Yes, but where did he go?” Bush demands impatiently.

“Dunno, do I sir? I didn’t ask him where he was going. I just saw him leave.”

Bush struggles to keep from snarling. “And when was this?” he asks, with deliberate calmness.

“Couple hours ago, maybe.”

He does snarl now, turning so sharply on his heel he nearly trips, and hurries out.

Out in the harbour, the ships are pealing six bells in the middle watch. Bush glances up at the sky; with no clouds the stars are clear white pinpricks, the moon a sliver of silver. There are still several hours until dawn. Bush huffs, breath fogging, and pulls his coat closer around himself. There are more public houses up in the town, higher class establishments out of the price range of most sailors. The captain has never been well off, but on a night like tonight it seems likely he would be willing to pay more for a quieter atmosphere. 

Bush rounds a corner and begins the gentle climb towards the higher quarters of Portsmouth. There’s a stone wall at the end of the block, a buttress between the low-lying harbour and the gentle crest of the town’s hill. It’s the height of a man’s shoulders, and there are no stairs nearby. Bush unbuttons his coat, breaks into a slight run and boosts himself up easily onto it, catching his weight with his knee and then rising. He is glancing along the road when he catches sight of a figure a little ways along, sitting on the wall staring out at the harbour. A figure in an officer’s hat and a dark uniform, with no greatcoat. Bush narrows his eyes, and walks towards him.

It is indeed the captain, his sharp face pale in the starlight, his shoulders hunched and knees drawn up. He looks almost like a child sitting on a quay, ready to play a game of ducks and drakes. Except that he sits with a stiffness no child knows, the stiffness of a man who has just had vinegar poured over open lash-wounds. 

Bush walks over slowly, keeping off the crumbling edge of the wall, until he comes to the captain. Hornblower looks up slowly; the moonlight catches his eye in a silver sickle. He doesn’t say anything. Bush sits down on the cold stone. 

They sit there in silence for several minutes, staring out at the ships in the harbour. Their lights glow like fireflies in the darkness, tiny daubs of warmth rocking back and forth with the light breeze. 

“My children are gone, William,” says Hornblower at last, without looking. His voice is rough, with a tinge of surprise. It reminds Bush of men he’s seen wounded in actions. The ones who only come to notice their injuries much later, and stare at them with a kind of pained astonishment. 

“I’m sorry, sir.” The words feel completely inadequate, but there’s nothing else he can say. Here he is neither entirely friend or subordinate, and as such can neither commiserate nor keep silent. 

“I never knew I cared so much, to feel so torn.” Hornblower still stares out at the ships, but his hand creeps up to press over his heart. His long fingers are rigid and clawed, like an old man’s. 

“No, sir.”

“It was never my ambition to be a father, William. But now that I am no longer one, I can scarcely stand the emptiness.” He draws his knee up closer to lean upon. “It is like to having your ship run aground and sink under you. No. Worse.” His tone is flat and dead now, coldly analytical. Bush shivers, shrinking down into his heavy coat. In the quiet, the gentle waves lap up against the shore.

“I cannot forget their faces,” whispers Hornblower at last, shivering and dropping his face against his knee; Bush isn’t sure whether his tone is one of horror or assertion, but he does know the captain isn’t addressing him. His chest aches for the man, a hot, uncomfortable feeling. 

“Come, sir, you are cold. You must go home, it’s late.” Bush stands, shrugs out of his coat and drapes it over Hornblower’s thin shoulders. “I’ve brought your coat.”

“Late?” The captain looks up at the sky, at the moon already far gone across it. “Yes, I suppose it is.” He stands awkwardly at Bush’s tug, nearly tumbling off the edge of the wall before Bush grabs his epaulette-adorned shoulder in a tight grip, heart in his mouth. Hornblower takes no notice of the close call, allows his lieutenant to shepherd him to the safety of the street and then help him into the too-large greatcoat. He doesn’t notice it isn’t his, as Bush knew he wouldn’t. Bush takes his captain’s arm, as he already took his wife’s this night, and begins to lead him back towards their home.

“Maria must be worried,” says Hornblower absently to himself, tripping on a loose stone. “She was so stalwart – never a word or complaint. I never would have credited her with such fortitude.” 

Bush, slightly shocked at his captain’s inattentive loquacity, nevertheless feels a minor pang for his earlier summary dismissal of the woman’s tears. He says nothing, merely steers Hornblower around a water butt and gives a passing tramp a hard look. 

They pace through the quiet streets at an easy speed, Bush adapting himself to his captain’s unusual stiff-legged gait. He still behaves less like a drunk than a wounded man, which Bush supposes is accurate enough. He has seen enough men broken out of the service to know that wounds to the heart can be at least as painful as those to the body. 

As they reach the Hornblowers’ boarding house, the captain slows and raises a shaking hand to take off his hat, staring up at the dark windows above. He stands in the street for several long heartbeats, a dark figure in the moonlight, still as a stone monument. Finally he speaks; it is more the movement than the sound that Bush catches.

“William?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Never be a father.” His voice is barely a whisper in the long street. 

“No, sir,” replies Bush, just as quietly. For a moment his hand wavers as he makes to reach out to the man, to press that sharp shoulder all but concealed under the too-large coat. In the pale light the captain seems cold and distant except for his eyes, which shine over-bright. Bush drops his hand, and steps past him to knock on the door instead. He ignores the rustle of the heavy sleeve from behind him. 

When he turns back, Hornblower is watching him with duller eyes and a softer expression. Bush steps back down to wait beside his captain, and reads gratitude in the silence.


End file.
